First-Year Engineering Students' Reflections: Plans and Actions for Meeting Course Learning Objectives

Low and High Performing First-Year Engineering Students’ Learning and Metacognitive Strategies

“…Control beliefs involve how barriers, perceived or real, affect one's decision-making. This theory will be used to explain high and low performing students' learning decisions and serve to highlight how students with different performance levels plan and make decisions [16], [22].…”

“…The study by Susser and McGabe [10] on undergraduate students from a diverse range of majors demonstrated an awareness of these beneficial strategies, but the majority reported that they did not use them. In a study of first year engineering students, it was revealed that students did not often utilize the study strategies that take more effort, such as redoing or completing extra problems [16]. Students also did not often utilize the assessment and feedback given on their assignments.…”

“…Students also did not often utilize the assessment and feedback given on their assignments. Their study strategies remained fixed across the semester even as different material was covered [16]. In the current study, a better understanding of how high and low performing students strategize and select (or fail to select) learning strategies to solve their challenges was sought through an analysis of student reflections on their learning and self-reports of their study plans and actions.…”

Weekly Self-rating of Proficiency with Course Learning Objectives: Gaining Insight into Undergraduate Students’ Perceptions of their Learning

“…Unbeknownst to many instructors, LOs can also be used regularly to discover students' learning challenges and needs through students' self-assessment of their proficiency level with course LOs, thus allowing instructors access students' perceptions of their learning and learning challenges [11]. This access to students' perceptions of their learning can mitigate the problems associated with late awareness of students' learning needs and difficulty in identifying specific students with learning challenges prior to critical exams.…”

“…These standards can be students' interpretation of the course LOs which then serve to anchor or center students' reflections and learning. There have been a limited number of studies in which LOs have served as the anchor for reflection [11], [21].…”